


Well-Adapted to Harsh Conditions

by APgeeksout



Category: Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Canon-Typical Reference to Underage, Canon-Typical References to Human Trafficking, Canon-Typical References to Sex Work, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 16:16:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1556486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new life merits a new name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well-Adapted to Harsh Conditions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [penombrelilas (crookedspoon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/gifts).



> Happy Rarewomen, penombrelilas! I hope the fest treats you well! 
> 
> I have not yet read beyond the first book in the Maddaddam trilogy, so on the off-chance something in this fic is contradicted by reveals in the later volumes, please know that it's purely unintentional.

“You should pick a name. If you take it from this list,” he says, entering a series of quick commands that result in the monitor populating with a dense block of text under the heading _Maddaddam's Extinctathon Index_ , “then it'll be like you're one of us. Everyone will know you belong here.” 

He's looking at her so earnestly that she finds herself agreeing easily. If she's going to work here, live here, do great things with this great man here, then it seems obvious, necessary that she take a new name. A rejuvenated identity for life at RejoovenEssense. 

She's already had more names than she can remember or count. More names than she's had years on the planet. Her life hasn't been all that long so far, but no one can argue it hasn't been full. 

She can no longer recall her first name. The one her mother gave her. The one she must have been called by her brother and all the mostly-forgotten aunties and uncles in that village with too many mouths and too little food. 

The next came from Uncle En: SuSu. The name of a charming flower-seller and of a bird-like girl lured into a succession of hotel rooms by men who showed shame only when ambushed by a more powerful man. The name that the all-knowing voice in Uncle En's watch whispered while she walked the city streets. 

After Uncle En and his watch both went silent, the man who replaced him did not choose a new name for her. At the time, she supposed this was fair enough, considering she never learned what he was called. 

Some of the men in the movies had had names for her – or at least things they wanted to call her, other people they wanted her to be – but to most of them it hadn't mattered what her name might be. They had no need to call her anything, except perhaps “the skinny one” or “the cat-eyed one” or “the one with the lollipop” when they would talk to Jack behind the camera as though she and the other girls in the house were furniture to be rearranged for the utility and comfort of the men. 

At times when there were no other men, Jack would call her “Pixie” and “Candy”. Later, when her English was better - and after she had passed through the streets of so many pleebland districts to calls of “honey”, “baby”, “sugar” - she came to understand that these had not been names that signified her in any real way, so much as more succinct ways of saying “the skinny one”, “the cat-eyed one”, “the one with the lollipop”. 

When the pharmacist came for her – after she had made his movie and he had talked to the man who was not Uncle En – yet another name came to her on the traveling papers she used to board the airplane to San Francisco. That name stayed with her for longer than any of the others – all the years in the garage and at the school she attended after the trial. 

It's even the name that appeared on her pay deposits from Student Services at the Watson-Crick Institute, though she went by dozens of other names there. Names chosen by or generated by the system to cater to the tastes of the students. She often served shifts as Sukey or Yuna, Bao or Cara or Xing-Mei; once, she was Sharon for a night. 

She reads down the long list thoroughly, pausing to consider each contender carefully before discarding it and moving on. 

_Acmella._

_Charalito._

_Galaxiella._

_Iochroma._

_Lortensis._

She deliberates for so long that Crake departs from her to attend to work elsewhere in the compound. Still, she determines to take all the time her task requires. Choosing her own name is something she's never done before, and she intends to do it only once. 

She means for the name she takes today to be the last one she'll ever need. 

 

“Oryx,” she pronounces, drawing out the two syllables as slowly as she can, feeling the shape of her new name on her tongue. 

Crake smiles and nods his approval. “An excellent choice. Pretty. Simple. And your pupils shouldn't have any trouble with the pronunciation.” 

“What kind of specimen is it? Did I choose a slime mold?”

He enters another command, and the list of words disappears from the screen, replaced by a piece of video footage: a small grouping of hoofed creatures – black and white markings on their long faces, the heads of all but the smallest young crowned with a pair of horns that sweep back in a gentle curve – nibble on brown and yellow grasses and nuzzle at one another. 

“Where could I go to see them?” she asks, knowing the answer, even as she asks. The world changed too much too fast, and there was nothing they could do to keep up.

“Ark-chives.” 

She is the last and only Oryx remaining. 

 

“Did you know the oryx's horns may have been the source of myths about the unicorn?” Jimmy says. 

She hums noncommittally against his shoulder. Jimmy is a “word-person”, which, among other things, means that he talks even when they could be lying quietly together in bed.

“I suppose, somewhere in one of the compounds, they'll have taken material from the oryx and some breed of show horse to grow a unicorn. Just to show they could. But in the stories, they were magical and elusive.”

She wraps her arm around his ribs, hooks one of her feet around his ankle. She has nearly an hour before she'll need to catch the train to Dallas for the next BlyssPluss demonstration, and she means to spend it right here, as tangled up as she pleases.

“Mysterious,” he adds, tracing the curve of her hip. "Beautiful." 

“And only virginal girls could touch them. I made a movie like that once.” 

He stiffens and shifts away, the better to study her face. “How old were you?” he demands. “What did they make you do?”

Jimmy is constantly reminding everyone that he's not a scientist, but he still wants to dissect her history. To unravel her genome and splice in instructions he finds more gratifying: sections of coding that make her weep delicately that he may comfort her, alleles that would make her a girl who quakes with helpless anger that he might avenge her. 

“Why do you always want to know these things? It was so long ago.” None of these things happened to Oryx. 

“I want to be the person you confide in. Depend on,” he says morosely. 

Even now, when it is no longer a skill central to her work, she knows how to read what men want from her and how to perform it to their satisfaction. She knows the display of devastation that would please Jimmy, letting him imagine that she is in need of a savior and that he is uniquely-suited to take care of her. 

Instead, she says “I do depend on you to show me a good, happy time.”

She offers sincerity, even – especially – when he wants only fantasy. Paradice is so close to bringing the whole world to rebirth. A world where certain kinds of adaptations are no longer necessary to survive. When she took her place in the Compound, she determined to be done with the kind of transformations SuSu and Pixie and Soo-Lin had been fortunate enough to learn so quickly and completely. When Oryx puts on a show, it is for her own benefit and pleasure alone.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Well-Adapted to Harsh Conditions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1808908) by [derivational (crookedspoon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/derivational)




End file.
